


Spaghetti

by HorseCrazyWriter76



Series: NaNoWriMo November 2019 [9]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Cooking, Fluff, Gen, Ghost!Virgil, Ghost!patton, ghost!Logan, ghost!roman, not beta read or edited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 02:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21468739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HorseCrazyWriter76/pseuds/HorseCrazyWriter76
Summary: The ghosts in my house wouldn't be so bad if they could just stop trying to cook.Prompt: https://unblockingwritersblock.tumblr.com/post/171105766087/675
Series: NaNoWriMo November 2019 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1541089
Comments: 8
Kudos: 100





	Spaghetti

Thomas had heard all the stories about the apartment. It was apparently haunted, and a peculiar burning smell came from it every night. Everyone he had asked around the area had cautioned him against moving in, but the rent was cheap, so here he was, holding the key to the front door in one hand and his car stuffed with enough things for him to be comfortable with until the moving van came later that week. He pushed his key into the lock and turned it, opening up the door.

The apartment was somehow even cleaner than when he first went by to look at the place. The carpet had faint tracks where a vacuum had gone through it, and the walls looked like they had been scrubbed. The smell of lavender and lemons drifted quietly through the air. He set his backpack down in what he had decided would be his room, then went back out for the rest of his stuff. It took him four trips to carry it all in, at which point he decided to just set up his bed, grab a snack, and while away some time on his computer. When he entered the kitchen, he saw what looked to be a blue man floating with his hand stuck through a cupboard door. 

“Oh, hey! I thought you would still be in the room,” the man said sheepishly, pulling his hand and a bag of flour out and floating downwards to stand on the floor.

Thomas’ mind raced to provide an answer to the man. Perhaps what he should have said was ‘Hello, I’m Thomas,’ or a casual, ‘Yeah, I got hungry, and I remember putting my bag of granola in here.’ Of course, what came out was, “Are you a ghost?” He mentally kicked himself in the head.

“Yeah! I’m a ghost, my name’s Patton.”

“I’m Thomas,” he replied, and mentally thanked his brain for a polite response.

“Well, welcome to the house, Thomas, I was just about to make dinner.”

“Don’t let him make dinner,” a faint purple ghost interrupted him, appearing out of the fridge, “He died by giving himself food poisoning from his own food.”

“Now, Vir-Anxiety, it’s rude to tell other people’s death stories.”

“I just thought he should know how bad of a cook you are. He’s the reason it always smells bad, by the way.”

“I think it smells good,” Thomas blurted, and mentally kicked himself again. What kind of comment was that?

“That’s ‘cuz Roman kept a hoard of Febreeze when he lived here and Logan went around the apartment and sprayed enough you’d think he was trying to make you asphyxiate.”

“Humans cannot be killed by ghostly objects, Anxiety,” a dark blue man, less opaque than Patton, but more than Virgil, interjected, walking through the doorway to the bathroom.

“It was a hyperbole, L.”

“Oh. Salutations, I am Logan. You have already met Patton and Anxiety. There are four of us in total, I am certain Roman will introduce himself shortly. Please let me cook tonight rather than Patton.”

“I think you’re being unfair to Patton and he should do whatever he darn well pleases.”

“Aw, thank you!” Patton bounced over and wrapped his arms around Thomas, leaving the unsettling feeling of warmth without any clear source for it around him, even though he knew it was from Patton.

“I will prepare the air fresheners,” Logan sighed and walked over to the pantry, opening the door, which spontaneously grew a translucent double, which swung open, and pulling a translucent bottle of Febreeze and wall air fresheners from it before leaning against it to shut it. The translucent door vanished into the opaque one, and Logan walked out. Patton hummed as he pulled more ingredients through the cabinet drawers. Anxiety sat on the counter, ignoring Thomas.

Thomas looked between them, then slowly pulled a granola bar from the box and retreated to his room to follow up on his plans to relax on his computer. He was set up, scrolling through his social media feeds, when he heard trumpet fanfare starting from somewhere in front of him. He looked up to see a red ghost floating through the wall on a giant parade float. The float and trumpets stopped, making way for a string quartet as the ghost stepped forward and off of the float.

“Greetings, dear king, I am Roman!”

Thomas’ mind had been sent scrambling for answers far too many times this day for his liking, so he surprised himself by being able to put together an articulate response of, “Hello, I’m Thomas.”

“Oh, I know. Logan brought word of your coming. What he neglected to mention was how handsome you are.”

His good luck with his first response was clearly not destined to hold as his floundering mind pushed out the question, “Are you gay?”

“Why yes, I am, is that a problem?” Roman’s tone had taken on a darker tone.

“No! No, I’m gay, too, I was ju-”

“Wonderful to hear! Well then-oh dear, that’s why Logan came armed with Febreeze and air fresheners,” Roman started, then cut himself off as a horrid, acid smell filled the room, “Well, I’m off to go help Patton control whatever mishap happened this time and Logan to rid the stench. Farwell, Thomas,” he said, the music and parade float fading away, as he floated off through the wall.

Thomas stared at the spot he had just glided through, then got up just long enough to open the window before returning to his mindless scrolling.

It quickly became apparent that this was a regular thing. He walked in one time when the smell started to see Logan and Roman putting out a fire and putting away ruined ghostly kitchen supplies while Virgil comforted Patton. It had felt oddly intrusive to walk in, so he had stayed out of the kitchen between when the smell started and when the smell was beat away from them on. The ghosts seemed to get the hint after the first couple weeks that when he closed the door to his room, he would like to be alone. He was having a welcome break from socializing when his phone rang he glanced at the caller id, swiping to accept when he saw the name of one of his best friends.

“Hey, Talyn, how’s it been?”

“Good, good, Joan and I just got some pet rats and they’re so adorable! I love them, but where’ve you been? We haven’t talked in like, a month.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that, I must have gotten caught up in moving. How are the rats settling in?”

“Great! Frodo is the most cuddly little guy. How’s it going with that haunted apartment you’re living in now?”

“Good, although I have to say the ghosts wouldn’t be so bad if they stopped trying to cook.”

“What?”

“Anyways, you said one of them is named Frodo?”

“Nuh-uh, have you tried giving the ghosts cooking lessons?”

“Are you kidding? We’ve cooked together before.”

“I mean, yeah, but have you tried signing up for an online cooking class? You can probably get one on SkillShare for free with all the sponsorships they’re giving out to YouTubers.”

“You know what? That’s a great idea, but tell me about Frodo.”

Thomas happily listened as Talyn told him all about Frodo and his brothers, Smeagol and Sam.

The next day he laughed as one of the YouTubers he regularly watched got a sponsorship from SkillShare. He signed up and found a course on basic cooking skills that looked good and brought his laptop out to the kitchen. The area was currently ghost free, although Thomas could see a faint purple outline of headphones.

“Hey, Patton,” he called into the silence.

“One second, Kiddo,” a voice echoed back to hit from somewhere above his head. A moment later Patton floated through the ceiling, “Sorry about that, what do you need?”

“Do you want to learn how to cook? I signed up for a cooking class online and I was thinking we could do it together.”

Patton smiled bright enough to rival a thousand suns. Thomas started the video, and they leaned over the counter to watch. Rather, Thomas leaned over and Patton lay in mid-air.

“What do you think about trying to make pasta?”

“That sounds great!”

“Awesome,” Thomas replied, pulling a pot out and filling it with water. He set it on the stove and turned it on to start warming up while he went to the pantry and dug through the poorly organized bins to find spaghetti. He turned back to see Patton had put a ghostly pot on the stove pot next to his.

“Spaghetti is the best, oo, can we make garlic bread for Roman, too?”

“Maybe? I’ll have to see how hard it is to make.”

“Okay,” Paton chirped, leaning over and making a motion like he was grabbing the box of spaghetti, duplicating it into a pale blue form. Thomas pulled out an arbitrary amount that he hoped was about the amount he would eat and put it in the pot, while Patton dumped his entire box into the pot, spraying hot water over the kitchen. All Thomas felt was a faint warm sensation as the water went straight through him. Thomas clicked open a new tab to look up how to make garlic bread and decided it didn’t look to hard to put some herbs in butter, put it on the bread, and bake it. He and Patton made the physical and astral versions of the bread and put it in the oven, then the timer beeped for the spaghetti. 

Thomas pulled the pot off the burner and strained the spaghetti, seeing Patton do the same in his peripheral vision. Thomas had accidentally made enough for two people, but he figured he could just put the extra in a tupperware and eat it later when he didn’t feel like actually cooking. Patton split his spaghetti between four bowls and added butter while Thomas split his between a bowl and a tupperware and added butter and some of the left-over herbs from the garlic bread. Patton pulled duplicate herbs out of the air and added it to his bowls. Thomas started in on his spaghetti, which was surprisingly good, while Patton told him about a project Roman was working on. The oven dinged a few minutes into Patton’s speech, and they broke to take the bread out of the oven.

“Hey, Logan, Roman, Virgil!”

Virgil and Logan came into the kitchen, Virgil clipping into the wall a little bit, but not seeming to notice, “I don’t know where I-oh, they’re right here,” Virgil stopped himself as he spotted the headphones. He picked them up and put them around his neck before turning to Patton just as Roman rose up through the floor.

“What’s up, padre?” Roman asked, feet still in the floor.

“Me and Thomas made dinner!” Patton said proudly, holding out his hands to indicate the food. 

“Thomas and I,” Logan corrected while Virgil looked down at the food suspiciously.

“Is it edible?” he asked Thomas.

The question gave him brief pause before he answered, “I don’t know the ghost rules for what’s edible and what’s not.”

“It’s all edible. We’re already dead, so we cannot die again unless we choose to,” Logan helpfully supplied.

“Wait, so I  _ can  _ eat all the things that look like they should be edible but really aren’t?”

“If you made or duplicated it you can still get  _ sick  _ from it.”

“But then why couldn’t have I duplicated it and Patton eaten it?”

“You really don’t get the point, do you?”

“Well, either way, let’s eat,” Virgil replied, pulling a bowl of spaghetti closer to him and taking a bite. His face lifted in surprise, then a slow smile broke out on his face.

“Do you like it?” Patton asked anxiously.

“It’s good,” Virgil replied, already lifting the bowl to his face and slurping up the spaghetti like a thick soup. 

Logan took a glance at him, then pulled a fork from behind the sink and tried it, “It is, indeed, well made.”

Roman lifted a fork from the drawer next to the sink, and tried some, “It is delightful!”

Thomas was sure Patton’s cheeks would hurt with how wide he was smiling.


End file.
